


Slow Dancing in a Burning Room

by agent_florida



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-03
Updated: 2010-07-03
Packaged: 2017-11-23 19:08:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/625572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agent_florida/pseuds/agent_florida
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everything has to end sometime, but neither of them thought it would come to this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Slow Dancing in a Burning Room

“Tomorrow.”  
  
South was still in Wash’s bed on a Sunday morning, naked and beautiful, putting off getting them breakfast in favor of kissing him awake. He had meant to tell her on Friday night, then Saturday morning, then Saturday night, but he kept putting it off, knowing that telling her would only make her upset. And sure enough, her reaction was predictable, pulling back from kissing him to look down into his face, brown eyes made black with anger. “Tomorrow what?”  
  
“I was rated for implantation. It’s happening tomorrow.”  
  
And sure enough, that glare only got more intense. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me?” The way she straddled him wasn’t playful; her words were bitter, stinging.  
  
“Because I knew you would react like this,” he snapped back.  
  
“Like what?”  
  
She was going to try to pull the innocent act on him? He had to admit, it would work easier now that they were naked instead of in armor, but it didn’t stop him from realizing that she could be a real bitch when she wanted to be. “I just want you to be happy for me. I worked my ass off to earn this – it’s like a promotion.”  
  
“I can be happy for you,” she said, too easily. The smile on her face was obviously fake.  
  
“Like you were happy for North?” She had reacted so poorly when her brother had received his AI. The best Wash could come to describing her behavior was that she had thrown a base-wide temper tantrum.  
  
“He was always the favorite. It’s a sibling thing. Oh, I forgot, you wouldn’t know about that, you were an only child.”  
  
“Don’t patronize me.” He was losing interest in her games, and he wanted to tell her to leave, but it was hard when she was rubbing up on him like that, reminding him of just why he had forgotten to tell her last night.  
  
“But it’s so easy,” she teased him, her tone halfway malicious as she leaned over to kiss his neck, her long braid trailing across his throat.  
  
That strange feeling of being choked was the last straw. “South. Grace, stop, listen.”  
  
Her eyes were dark and narrow again. “What,  _David_?”  
  
She always insisted on using his given name, even though she knew it set him off. “You just don’t get it, do you? I want you to be there tomorrow. I want you there for support. But if you can’t do that…”  
  
“You’ll what? What, Wash, what are you gonna do? Break up with me? Ha, that’s a good one.” Her laugh was good-natured, even though the sudden flash of her teeth should have put him off.  
  
“I was going to say that I would be disappointed in you.” The maneuver to pin her underneath him was too easy; she was too slight and he had caught her off-guard. “Break up with you? You might be the best thing that’s happened to me in the better part of ten years.”  
  
“Yeah, until you get your AI and I get replaced.” She pushed him off of her with a palm to his chest, and he watched as she climbed out of bed, collecting the clothes she had tossed haphazardly all over his floor last night.  
  
“So that’s what this is about? You’re jealous, not that I’m getting one and you’re not, but that you think it can  _replace_  you? Replace a flesh-and-blood human being?” Did she realize how ridiculous she sounded?  
  
“Oh, so it’s only because I’m real and it’s fake? Thanks, Wash, that’s so reassuring.” She was already half-dressed, but the way her breasts were moving as she tried to hook her bra closed was making him wish she was naked under him again.  
  
“South, that’s not what I meant. You know that.”  
  
“Yeah? Well, it’s what you said, and it’s what I heard. I’m getting breakfast. I’ll be back later.” And before he could make a move or say something to stop her, she was already gone, the door to his room slamming behind her. He groaned, slapping his palm to his forehead, trying to figure out how that conversation had gone so drastically wrong, but it just seemed like recently, he couldn’t say anything around South without inadvertently pissing her off. Things had been so much easier when he didn’t love her so much, when it had just been quick fucks here and then between training exercises.  
  
She didn’t come back with breakfast like she normally did. In fact, she didn’t come back at all that day, and Wash felt her absence acutely.  
  
\--  
  
He had been waiting outside the operating room for what felt like ages, waiting for South to show. She must have had a training exercise, he rationalized to himself. Something else kept her away from him on the most important morning of his life. It had nothing to do with their argument yesterday, nothing to do with the growing rift between them…  
  
Good lord, was he getting sentimental? People came and went in his life, and most of them hadn’t stuck around for as long as South had currently been putting up with him. He knew he should have been more hardened by now, but he still felt each loss, and he knew he couldn’t do that to South. Even though she was frustrating sometimes, he could deal with that. He’d need her support while he adjusted to his AI, if she didn’t kill him for it first.  
  
“Agent Washington?” It was an anonymous nurse, surgical mask already covering her face. “We’re ready for you now.”  
  
A final glance down the hallway confirmed his suspicions. She wasn’t coming. He stood, sighed, and followed the nurse into the operating room.  
  
\--  
  
South was next to him when he woke – not holding his hand, not smoothing his forehead, not making any other signs of devotion or attention. She was just sitting there, arms crossed, looking more than a little bored. “Finally,” she said when he blinked and showed signs of life.  
  
“Where were you?” His mouth felt dry, and his limbs felt leaden. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong, and he couldn’t pinpoint what it was.  
  
“Maine called our training exercise early this morning.” She didn’t offer an apology, and he wondered whether she was afraid he wouldn’t accept it, or whether she really wasn’t sorry about not being there for him.  
  
When it became clear that she wasn’t going to ask him how he was feeling, he filled in the details himself. “I’m fine, by the way. He’s not online yet.”  
  
“He?” Her voice was full of deadly curiosity, and he knew she was tempted to keep calling his AI an ‘it.’  
  
“His name is Epsilon.” And she’d just have to get used to that.  
  
“Do you know what it’s supposed to do?”  
  
“I have no idea what  _his_  abilities are.” In retrospect, it seemed like something he should have asked before the implantation process.  
  
“I’ll bet you anything, right now, that it’ll drive you crazy after a while.” She said it like a joke, but her smile held something besides her normal wickedness.  
  
“I’ll be fine. I promise.” And he smiled, reaching out for her hand. It was cold, but her fingers threaded reassuringly with his. “I think it’s about time for me to get discharged, don’t you?”  
  
\--  
  
 _Alpha Alpha Alpha Alpha Alpha Alpha Alpha Alpha_  
  
The litany in his head woke him for the second time that night, and he knew that it would be futile to attempt to sleep this one off. It was all he could do to drag his exhausted body out of bed, moving carefully so he wouldn’t wake South, and shuffle to the bathroom, turning on the light and looking himself in the eye in the mirror.  
  
He looked like seven different kinds of hell, his hair greasy and sticking on end, severe stubble on his face, eyes bleary and looking altogether foreign to him. There was a light in them that he didn’t recognize, and for a few moments, he felt like he wasn’t staring at himself, but at a host, just a housing, a shell. “Epsilon,” he groaned. He didn’t have time for this shit, not now.  
  
 _I want you to help me come get the Alpha, Wash, I want to go, I want to do it right now, please, can we do it right now, please_  
  
He could feel his AI’s sparking desire for it, somewhere beneath his own feeling of supreme annoyance at this interruption. A cursory explanation of the human need for sleep was apparently beyond him at this point, so he just tried to throw off memories of what it felt like after he was well-rested and what it felt like when he didn’t sleep so well. Of course, most of those nights had been South’s fault, either benevolently or malevolently. Sex could keep them up pretty late, but their fights always managed to take more out of him.  
  
To his surprise, Epsilon actually tried to  _talk back_  to him, throwing off memories of his own, and it made Wash reel, leaning against the sink and gripping on for dear life as the sheer strength of the  _reality_  of it brought him to his knees. This – this was  _chaos_ , confusion and anarchy as he tried to sort through what thoughts were his own and what thoughts belonged to his AI. Surely he hadn’t been tortured like this in his first few days at BT?  
  
“Wash?” South groaned out from the other room, and he could hear the rustle of sheets as she turned over. She had a bad habit of hogging his bed whenever he’d leave in the night. “Come back to bed.”  
  
Easy for her to say; she didn’t have to do battle with another personality in her head. He managed to stumble back to her, collapse into bed, but he couldn’t sleep as he traced the lines of her face with his eyes. Something else, a feeling of intense jealousy, was rising within him, and he knew that particular feeling was foreign to him. Had she been right? Would this AI end up taking all his time and energy?  
  
He didn’t sleep that night, and he was just that much more terse the next day. He could tell South was keeping her distance, and he knew that it was his own fault, but he couldn’t bring himself to beg for her company. He was too proud to admit that he couldn’t handle Epsilon on his own.  
  
\--  
  
It wasn’t much longer until Wash realized that this was how things would continue to be. Every time he would so much as think about South now (especially those unbidden thoughts, the ones of her thighs clenching around his hips and her heels digging into the small of his back, or the faint remembrance of the fragrance that lingered on her collarbones whenever he’d hold her), Epsilon would get particularly violent, demanding his attention to rescue the Alpha and pitching a fit in Wash’s head until he could spare a moment and calm him down.  
  
It was so hard to concentrate on himself, let alone a relationship, when he felt like he was losing his tether on reality, and with each passing day, it became more and more difficult to disentangle his thoughts from the rambling, disconnected half-remembrances of his AI. The one thing that helped him to feel more coherent was time spent with South, but she was drawing away, spending her time bettering her aim on the ranges or running through more training exercises with Maine.  
  
She didn’t come to him any more, so he had to corner her, waiting until North left the room he shared with his sister so he could go in and ask South what her problem was. “What is your problem lately?”  
  
“You.” She didn’t even turn around, mechanically taking apart her firearms and inspecting them for flaws, the tremor in her hand the only thing betraying her agitation.  
  
“That’s not my fault.” He wanted to explain everything about Epsilon, but his AI was yammering at him again from the back of his head, telling him to shut up and get away from this vixen before it was too late.  
  
“Yes, it is. You could have told them no, you didn’t want an AI, but you did it anyway.” Two seconds of a smoldering glance from her was all the eye contact he could take at once.  
  
“How was I supposed to know it would be like this? If I had known –“  
  
“You would have done it anyway.” And he hated her for telling the truth in that moment, for exposing his weaknesses and his attempts to be better than he actually was.  
  
“That’s not true.” His pride said he had to lie. Epsilon said he had to lie.  
  
“Listen, asshole,” and she finally turned around, sick of his pretentions, “just get out. I didn’t invite you in. Don’t you get it? I don’t want to spend time with you when you’re like this.”  
  
“Like what?” No. Not like this. He could feel that tenuous connection they had slipping more and more with each word coming out of his mouth, but he still had to convince himself that it wasn’t entirely his fault, that she had been to blame too.  
  
“You know – acting totally pathetic, like I’m the only reason you stuck around.”  
  
“But I told you –“  
  
“I don’t care what you told me.” She always looked ugly when they were fighting. It was the subtle curl to her lips that revealed her overprominent canines, the way her eyebrows would furrow and make that deep crease in her forehead, the tension in her body that he longed to iron out with his own.  
  
“South, you are the  _only_  reason I’m still here. I’ve told you this time and again.” He reached out for her face, but she flinched away, and the only thing he could feel against his fingertips was the stinging brush of the ends of her hair as her head whipped around.  
  
There were a few moments of stillness, the only sound in the room South’s measured breathing. Then, her voice was very even as she told him, “I don’t want that responsibility.”  
  
“Don’t want – “ The words didn’t make sense to him, even as he tried to repeat them. He thought he’d misheard at first, because Epsilon’s voice was so loud between his ears, but when South wouldn’t stop pointedly gazing at the floor, he knew he’d heard her correctly. “Grace, I was hoping that – that we could get past this – that we could get through a deployment together and then –“  
  
“And then what?” Her tone was derisive as her eyes snapped back to his, and he realized that he hadn’t seen them light brown in ages now – they were dark as rage. “Ride off into the sunset on a Mongoose with white streamers off the back? Jesus, Wash, I knew you were dumb, but I never thought you were  _that_  stupid.”  
  
“I thought –“  
  
“Thought what?” He clearly had lost control over the conversation by now, and he let her steamroller right over him, feeling the acute crush in his chest. “That you were the only guy here who had taken an interest in me? That I would put up with you for any longer than I had to?”  
  
Why had it taken him so long to put all the pieces together? He could blame Epsilon; the static in his head didn’t let him focus. But his AI wasn’t entirely to blame – it was him, and Epsilon drove it home with a short, clipped  _you were never good enough._  “Maine?”  
  
“What else was I supposed to do, Wash? Sit there and watch you deteriorate? Put up with a – a  _thing_  in your head that obviously hated me and probably wanted to kill me?” She shook her head, but she never broke that too-intense eye contact.  
  
“You were supposed to be  _faithful_  to me, you selfish cunt.” He wanted to reach out, hold a hand around her neck, force her body up against the wall, choke the life out of her, but the frightening thing was that he couldn’t tell whether this sudden vein of malice was entirely his own.  
  
“Oh, that is  _it_ ,” she spat out, finally standing up and getting in Wash’s face. She was so short that she barely came up to his chest, but she was still a force to be reckoned with, especially if she decided to get violent. Something in him was thrilled that he was able to push her buttons like that, but the other parts of him were horrified that it had come to this. “Get  _out_ , get out of here  _right now_ , or I swear to  _God_ , Wash –“  
  
He didn’t wait for the end of that threat, didn’t stick around to get the punch to the face he was sure was coming. It wasn’t until he’d finally collapsed in a chair in his own room that he realized that tears were streaming down his face.  
  
\--  
  
 _God, you suck._  
  
“Y’know, I could do without the commentary,” Wash said out loud. He hadn’t realized the whiskey had gotten to him so soon – was he older, or was it the AI? Whatever the case, he had to overthink to keep from slurring, and that was never a good sign.  
  
 _Finally, that stupid bitch is out of the way._  Epsilon usually wasn’t this vocal, and Wash knew he had to listen.  _We can finally go and spring the Alpha. That’s what we’re going to do, right?_  
  
Was he so insane by now that he was talking out loud to something that was only in his head? “You c’n go ‘f you want. ‘M staying right here.” He couldn’t get his mind off South, couldn’t make himself forget her, and his memories blurred around the edges, buffed out all the roughness of their difficulties, the more and more alcohol was coursing through his system.  
  
 _You promised me, Wash. You promised._  
  
“I make a lot of promises, Epsilon. None of them ever end well.” Was his tumbler this empty again already? More whiskey. More whiskey.  
  
 _You’re not coming with me?_  
  
“No, Epsilon.” He’d rather sit here, feeling sorry for himself, rhapsodizing over everything good between him and South, everything he’d be missing.  
  
 _Then I guess this is goodbye, Wash._  
  
“Wait.” He could feel a shuffling in the back of his mind, something knocked just this side of out of place. “Where are you going, Epsilon? What are you –“  
  
A gunshot rang out in his ears.  
  
“Epsilon?”  
  
No answer.  
  
“… South?”  
  
No answer.  
  
“… Grace?”  
  
No answer.  
  
The silence was deafening, and it lasted for weeks.  
  
\--  
  
“No, Wash,” and she said his name with a funny twist to it, like she knew something he didn’t, “I never had one. I was in the implant group behind you.  _Remember?_ ”  
  
He didn’t.


End file.
